With Sessions out. and Whittaker in as acting AG, it looks like Trump has his ducks in a row. He’s gone into offense mode.
The midterms are over and Republicans secured an even stronger hold on the senate, which is in charge of appointing administrative picks. This will include his new Attorney General.
The President sat down with Lewandowski and Bossie for their new book, Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency, and opened up about spygate.
In Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency, authors Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, and David Bossie, deputy campaign manager and part of the transition team, sat down with Trump for a 45-minute interview, covering a wide-range of topics, including the Mueller probe, fake news and his strained relationship with Obama.
When asked if he believed Obama knew that his appointed CIA chief John Brennan and director of national intelligence (DNI) James Clapper were conducting surveillance on citizens, specifically members of his campaign, Trump said he believed the former president was aware of what they were doing.
Trump responded: ‘Personally, I think he knew. Yeah. Just remember what they did.
‘Let me put it this way: if the shoe were on the other foot, and the same thing happened to him, it would be treason and they’d be locked up for 100 years.’
In an author’s note, Lewandowski and Bossie write: ‘In several documents pertaining to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, meetings between the FBI and top members of the Executive Branch are discussed.
‘In most cases, the names of all individuals who attended these meetings are listed and unredacted, with the exception of one.
‘We have several sources who have informed us that this redacted name is President Barack Obama. If these sources are correct, it would mean that Obama had direct knowledge of the surveillance on Donald Trump.’
The FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation sought to uncover ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It later would morph into the Russia probe being overseen by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The initial probe was established on July 31, 2016, and the code name was a line from a Rolling Stones lyric at a time when Trump was firing up his supporters to the 1968 hit song Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
The authors write in their new book, which is out on Tuesday: ‘We have little doubt that Obama had let his intelligence agencies spiral out of control during his eight years in office, even going so far as to either implicitly or explicitly allow them to conduct surveillance on citizens of the United States on domestic soil—and not just any citizens, but members of the Trump campaign.’
The two claim people at the top of Obama’s government were more left-leaning than in any administration in history, and they felt threatened by the incoming Trump administration, leading to ‘treasonous’ surveillance and sparking the Russia probe.
But Trump believes the investigation has made his supporters even more loyal, saying: ‘I think it makes my base stronger.
‘I would have never said this to you. But I think the level of love now is far greater than when we won.’
Despite Clapper and Brennan’s surveillance and their likely push to have Obama advise Trump not to hire Michael Flynn as head of the National Security Counsel, which would expose their abuse, the authors said it was James Comey who created the most trouble for Trump by delivering the dossier concocted by Christopher Steele.
They wrote: ‘By bringing that folder into his briefing with Trump, Comey transformed the dossier from unverified fiction to ‘a document that was presented to the president-elect in a private briefing with intelligence agencies.
‘Fake News organizations could now make it sound like an essential piece of information.
‘Comey had given the fake dossier legitimacy, and the Fake News license to print the whole thing, which BuzzFeed did a day later. He admitted he did this in his own memos, writing that CNN was waiting for a ‘news hook’ to publish.’
In the sit-down interview, Trump took aim at the fired FBI director, saying in hindsight he should have fired him from the start.